Unisys and IMC Team to Provide Open OLTP for Business

Business Wire, Jan 23, 1995

BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--January 23, 1995--Unisys Corporation and Information Management Company (IMC) today announced that the companies have joined forces to develop commercial Open Online Transaction Processing (Open OLTP) products for business applications.

Available now, and fully integrated, the initial offering includes an enhanced TUXEDO ETP System integrated with Open TransPort for interoperability amongst OLTP Systems. Work is in progress to provide system management and high availability. The products will be sold directly by Unisys under the TransIT trademark, and also offered by IMC on UNIX, Microsoft Windows/NT, and IBM platforms through IMC's worldwide distribution channels.

"The goal of this teaming is to provide MIS with an Open OLTP environment that offers transaction processing capabilities and the reliability, availability, serviceability and security inherent in proprietary TP environments," says Glenn Rose, vice president of marketing at IMC. "This is accomplished by expanding the excellent OLTP platform provided by the TUXEDO System to provide features typically found in high-end, mainframe environments."

TUXEDO enhancements provide pragmatic improvements demanded by customers in actual applications: i.e., large transactions, increased system performance, throughput and capacity, high availability, and the reliability and security inherent in mainframe environments. Enhanced features include language support for C and ADA, choice of static or shared libraries, tunable spin-lock timing for optimized throughput, message queue block diagnostics, "patch on demand" maintenance, and sample applications, which include Oracle, Sybase, Informix, with interfaces for Gupta SQL Windows, PowerBuilder from PowerSoft and other popular graphical user interface (GUI) tools.

The key benefit of Open TransPort is assured transparent interoperability among popular OLTP Systems: TUXEDO, IBM IMS, and CICS, Unisys Open OLTP and any OSI-TP compliant environment. All hardware and software investments remain protected, and are easily leveraged into a UNIX-based client/server environment. In particular, Open TransPort XAP, by virtue of utilizing OSI-TP protocol, offers customers increasing vendor independence as products that implement this industry standard become available.

Of particular note is the immediate availability of TUXEDO on Microsoft NT, plus the UNISYS transaction system TransIT Open/OLTP for Windows NT, now planned for delivery Q1 or Q2 1995. IMC has been appointed the master distributor for all Unisys Open System products, including this TUXEDO port for Microsoft Windows NT.

The Open TransPort XAP product was jointly developed and tested at several beta sites worldwide, where OSI has long been the protocol of choice. "This is significant news because for the first time, different transaction monitors can interoperate using open protocols," said Peter Dessart, vice president and chief technologist, IMC. "Open TransPort XAP is unique in that I know of no other tool that provides this much needed capability."

"The combination of Unisys and IMC technologies provides maximum benefit to our customers," stated Michael Lushine, Unisys Director of Development for Open Interoperability Products. "IMC customers in the UNIX and Windows NT markets can take advantage of three decades of experience that have gone into Unisys products for Enterprise Transaction Processing. Unisys customers are now guaranteed an unprecedented level of heterogeneous interoperability spanning the full range of hardware from enterprise server to desktop workstation. This relationship defines a `win-win' situation."

Sequent Computer Systems, Inc., a technology partner to both Unisys and IMC, and a leading architect of open client/server systems for commercial computer applications, also selected IMC as their primary provider of TUXEDO System products and services. As voiced by Mark Miller, Sequent's vice president of marketing, "We are pleased to have IMC as our primary provider; we selected IMC for its industry-leading expertise and strong reputation for providing the highest levels of support, service and education for TUXEDO-based products."

Priced from $400 to $26,000, Open TransPort XAP is available immediately, and is the latest addition to the Open TransPort family of products, which includes Open TransPort TPS for MVS/IMS and Open TransPort TPS for MVS/CICS. Pricing for Open OLTP on Microsoft Windows NT server follows pricing for some thirty plus platforms currently available from IMC, ranging from $1200 to $79,000.

Unisys Corporation is a leading information management company with 60,000 customers in 100 countries. The company is a major supplier of information services and technology to financial services, government, telecommunications, airline and other commercial markets. Unisys has gained three decades of expertise in meeting the needs of transaction-intensive enterprises in these markets.

Headquartered in Edison, N.J., IMC is a full-service Open OLTP software company dedicated to providing a smooth transition to open systems computing. In addition to the Open TransPort product family, IMC offers the TUXEDO Enterprise Transaction Processing System, which is technology-licensed from Novell Inc. IMC is also the leading provider of TUXEDO for a wide variety of hardware, UNIX and proprietary platforms, plus education, support, maintenance and consulting services. -0-